Believe it or Else

Railroaded

Posted on April 30, 2020April 30, 2020 by Mike

So one conversation, with disgraced corrupt rogue agent Strzok, without counsel present and without the defendant being aware that this was an interrogation of him as opposed to just a friendly intragovernmental chit-chat, has consumed three years of Flynn’s life and all his savings.

I heard Kellyanne Conway being asked this morning about whether Trump should now pardon Flynn. No. It is for the court, as an act of judicial hygiene, to accept Flynn’s withdrawal of his enforced guilty plea (made under threats by the feds to destroy the lives of various family members, too), quash the conviction as a miscarriage of justice, and invite the defense to lay before His Honor a wrongful prosecution suit.

If it requires a presidential pardon to bring garbage like this to an end, then we are all in trouble. Because if the Deep Staters can do it to Flynn, they can do it to anyone.

Sheeeit. Can there be anyone out there so naive, so gullible, so out of touch with the cold realities of life in Amerika v2.0, that they don’t know full well that it’s already happening, and has been for years?

Misremembering to the FBI should not be a crime – especially not on the basis of a politically motivated policeman’s supposedly contemporaneous “notes”, rather than an audio or video recording. Instead of a presidential pardon, why not repeal this vile pseudo-crime that mocks due process? I take it that, the GOP having lost the House, Congress will not enact a new Strzok Act, restoring the citizen’s right to misremember to a corrupt police agency’s goons, but why cannot Bill Barr suspend this “crime” pending an investigation into its misuse by prosecutors over recent years?

While we’re at it, how about another modest reform? Me again, three years ago:

During the stupid and anachronistic two-and-a-half-month electoral ‘transition’, the outgoing Administration worked round the clock to de-legitimize and cripple their successors.

No other government in the free world requires this long to respect the results of an election. Even before the Obama-Biden Administration decided to weaponize the “transition”, it served as the most obvious example of the general sclerosis of Swampland: why be surprised that in an emergency the government takes months to get out your relief check of twelve hundred bucks when even in normal times it requires three months to clear out its desks? How about a constitutional amendment to the Twentieth Amendment shortening the transition to three weeks?

I think it’s sooooo cute that Mark still thinks the Constitution means a goddamned thing, even after all this.

The FBI has been entirely corrupt, malevolent, and a deadly threat to supposed American rights and freedom since its Constitutionally-dubious inception. It was originally birthed under the direction of J Edgar Hoover, conceptualized and structured in accord with his own warped vision. As twisted, treacherous, and power-mad as he was personally, how could his brainchild be anything other than the nefarious affront to the most fundamental concepts of true justice America claims to cherish that it has been from the beginning?

The FBI doesn’t need to be “reformed” or “restructured” or “rethought.” It is rotten root, branch, and bough; meaningful reform is an impossibility for so cancerous a blight on the former Republic. The danger it represents, the grievous harm it has done, the extraordinary malfeasance that is its stock in trade, is engraved all across its appalling history. It should be removed—dismantled, disassembled, decontructed

That so treacherous, dishonorable, and altogether toxic little worm as Comey could rise through the FBI hierarchy to eventually occupy its highest seat of power is indictment aplenty. That any organization would countenance such a one in even its lowest ranks, much less at its head, ought to be all that’s required to pass judgment on whether that organization lives on or dies. Its continued existence, on the other hand, is no less grave an indictment of us.

Update! Swiped from Francis.

He follows on with this:

As Friedrich Hayek observed in The Road to Serfdom, the desire for power and the willingness to do anything to get and keep it are strongest in those who would abuse it. So with the passage of enough time, the corridors of power will be filled by criminals. Worse, let a little more time go by, and the lesser criminals will be replaced by the greater ones: strong-armers, rapists, and murderers.

Think Ruby Ridge and Waco.

A bit later Fran contends that “…we haven’t yet descended to the level of a banana republic,” to which I can only say: after what we’ve witnessed over the last six weeks, how sure can we be of that, really? Seems to me about the only thing that has kept us from fully meriting that designation up ’til now is our general affluence, which is being wantonly destroyed before our very eyes. After we’ve been impoverished, humiliated, and enslaved to the satisfaction of our masters…well, then what shall we call ourselves?

“The biggest shock since the Great Depression”

Posted on April 30, 2020April 30, 2020 by Mike

Hey, no worries. Professional politicians and Deep State bureau-rats universally assure us it can all be turned back on again as easily as flipping a light switch. And when have those supergeniuses ever been wrong about anything?

GDP falls by 4.8 percent, bringing longest economic expansion on record to abrupt halt
Gross domestic product, which measures the output of goods and services, sank by 4.8 percent in the first quarter on an annualized basis, according to an initial estimate from the Department of Commerce released Wednesday morning.

It’s the steepest decline since the Great Recession, which ended in 2009. Economic growth was tracking at or above 2 percent until mid-March.

With most of the nation stuck at home, large swaths of the economy have shuttered, throwing 26 million people out of work. Consumer spending, which drives around two-thirds of economic growth, has plummeted.

While Wall Street had been steeling itself for the data, the worst is yet to come. First quarter data captured economic activity up to the end of March, but the second quarter will likely include three straight months of decline.

“You’re looking at something like minus 20 percent to minus 30 percent in the second quarter,” White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNBC on Monday, noting that the coronavirus is “the biggest shock since the Great Depression. It’s a very grave shock and it’s something we need to take seriously.”

The Congressional Budget Office estimated second-quarter GDP would be down by as much as 40 percent, for the worst quarter since 1947.

Economists say the U.S. likely entered recession — generally defined as two consecutive quarters of decline in GDP — in the second half of March, when lockdowns began.

“You’re going to see the economy really bounce back in July, August, September,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told Fox News earlier this week. “You’re seeing trillions of dollars that’s making its way into the economy and I think this is going to have a significant impact,” he said of the government’s $2 trillion dollar emergency stimulus package meant to buttress the economy.

Damage: done.

A farmer named Shad Sullivan warned in a viral video that “[America’s] food supply is in trouble.”

Farmers are outraged that subpar imported meat continues to flow into America despite warnings to American farmers to put down their own livestock.

“Yesterday, the first shipment of imported beef from the country of Namibia hit the shores of the United States of America,” said Sullivan. “And yet this morning they are telling us to prepare to euthanize harvest-ready cattle.”

Sullivan questioned, “Am I the only one who sees a problem in this?”

Racist.

Over 30 Million Americans Have Lost Their Jobs In The Last Six Weeks
In the last week 3.839 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits for the first time.

That brings the six-week total to 30.31 million, which is over 12 times the prior worst five-week period in the last 50-plus years.

Worse still, the final numbers will likely be worsened due to the bailout itself: as a reminder, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed on March 27, could contribute to new records being reached in coming weeks as it increases eligibility for jobless claims to self-employed and gig workers, extends the maximum number of weeks that one can receive benefits, and provides an additional $600 per week until July 31. A recent WSJ article noted that this has created incentives for some businesses to temporarily furlough their employees, knowing that they will be covered financially as the economy is shutdown. Meanwhile, those making below $50k will generally be made whole and possibly be better off on unemployment benefits.

As Mises’ Robert Aro noted earlier in the week, the stimulus packages being handed out across this world provide us with an opportunity to document the anticapitalist process as it unfolds in real time, keeping in mind that when these inflation schemes fail, it will likely be blamed on capitalism.

And Trump, of course. After all, that was one of the main points of this whole disastrous exercise.

But no matter. The damage is done now; assuredly, there will be no going back to where we were from this, our New Normal. Wherever you sit, whatever you choose to believe, it all comes down to one thing.

I do believe I need to set up that song title as a new category here.

Turnaround, in the wrong direction

Posted on April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Mike

This. This right here.

RUSH: So, I checked the email during the break (I always do that), and there was a great question. “Rush, what is it that’s really bothering you about this? I don’t think you’re actually telling us. I don’t think you’re getting all the way there. It seems like you’re holding things back. What’s really bothering you?”

I’m not holding anything back, but I did… I thought, “Okay. What do they think I’m holding back? Why do people think that I’m not saying what I really think about this?” So I began to analyze that and I have an answer — and here’s what it is? You know what bugs me about this? We’re just sitting around waiting!

We’re not in any way attacking this. We’re not on offense at all. We are being entirely defensive, and that doesn’t defeat anything. “But, Rush! But, Rush! We’re talking about a contagious disease. We must avoid the spread.” Let me tell you something, folks. There is so much about this that I don’t think we have been truthfully told.

And I don’t know whether that it’s purposeful or not. I’m not gonna go into Conspiracyville. But Governor Cuomo yesterday was now telling us that far more people have been infected than they knew — and we know this is true in Santa Clara, California. It’s probably true in California at large. We know it’s true in LA County.

What Governor Kemp is doing is going on offense. Governor Kemp says, “We’re not gonna let this think destroy us. We’re not gonna let this thing…” I mean, we’re sitting around and allowing this to happen! It’s actually worse than that. We are doing this to ourselves. This is the thing that just grates on me under the guise that we’re trying to do what?

Keep people from getting sick. The recovery rate remains 98%. You’re probably sick and tired of me saying that. But overall, what bothers me, folks, is that how long are we gonna sit down? How long are we going to shelter in place? To what end? “Well, Rush, we have to bend the curve, my man.”

Yeah (sigh), and we’re bending the curve for what reason? Make sure the hospitals are not overrun with a bunch of people infected at the same time. But we’re eventually gonna have come out of our hovels, aren’t we? The hobbits are gonna eventually have to start looking for the ring.

It just seems like this is an entirely defensive posture, and I know the people in charge of it can make the case for that, but it just… (grumbling) “How would you attack the virus, Rush? We can’t even see it.” Well, I’m not an epidemiologist. But the things that we’ve been told, like, “We gotta wait for a vaccine”? We may never get one of those!

Believe it or not, Rush’s rant precisely mirrors a conversation I was having with my brother recently, although we were discussing Trump specifically as having somehow been forced onto the defensive by the Chink-N-Pox bait and switch. However such an unwelcome reversal may have transpired, if the Prez doesn’t quickly come up with a way to turn things around and get back to throwing punches instead of covering up, it will cost not only Trump but the nation itself quite dearly.

A very large part of Trump’s appeal to fed-up Real Americans was his eagerness to take the offensive, rather than the usual defensive crouch we’d all grown so frustrated and disgusted with after years of perennial-loser GOPe frauds swirling willingly down the drain. Trump can hardly afford to back into a neutral corner for some rope-a-dope action now; with a miraculously-revived US economy being brought to unexpected ruin all around us, what was an all-but-a-gimme 2020 reelection suddenly looks one hell of a lot dicier as it is.

“Defensive” is not a good look for Trump; that same tired old shit is readily available from any garden-variety GOPe hack in arm’s reach, any time we feel like squeezing his bulbous head for some. We need Trump back on track banging away at his/our enemies relentlessly, making them react to him instead of the other way around, now more than ever.

The numbers are clear

Posted on April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Mike

And they still aren’t dissipating that fishy aroma wafting off of the Corony “crisis.”

Data are coming in, and their import is clear. The coronavirus pandemic is not and never was a threat to society. COVID-19 poses a danger to the elderly and the medically compromised. Otherwise, for most who present symptoms, it can be nasty and persistent, but is not life-threatening. A majority of those infected do not notice that they have the disease. Coronavirus presents us with a medical challenge, not a crisis. The crisis has been of our own making.

On March 16, Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London predicted a coronavirus death toll of more than two million in the United States alone. He arrived at this number by assuming that infection would be nearly universal and the fatality rate would be high—a terrifying prospect. The next day, Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis sifted through the data and predicted less widespread infection and a fatality rate of between 0.05 and 1.0 percent—not that different from the common flu. The coronavirus is not the common flu. It has different characteristics, afflicting the old more than the young, men more than women. Nevertheless, all data trends since mid-March show that Ferguson was fantastically wrong and Ioannidis was largely right about its mortal threat.

In epidemiology, nothing is certain. The facts may change in the future. But as of now, this much is certain: Current data point to a disease that is far less deadly than was feared when our country hurled itself over the cliff of mass lockdown. The WHO was at that time issuing warnings that presumed a death rate 20-30 times higher than what now appears realistic.

We need fact-based policies. COVID-19 spreads rapidly, and any fast-spreading disease can strain medical resources as incidences rise. Long recovery times increase patient loads in hospitals. Careful planning and resource allocation are therefore essential. They were accomplished successfully in New York, much to the credit of medical professionals here. The American people need to be told of that success, which, given the density of New York, shows that we can and will succeed everywhere in our country.

We’ve been stampeded into a regime of social control that is unprecedented in our history. Our economy has been shattered. Ordinary people have been terrorized by death-infused propaganda designed to motivate obedience to the limits on free movement. We have been reduced to life as medical subjects in our condition of self-quarantine. As unemployment numbers skyrocket and Congress spends trillions, the political stakes rise.

The experts, professionals, bureaucrats, and public officials who did this to us have tremendous incentives to close ranks and say, “It is not wise to tell people that the danger was never grave and now has passed.” Sustaining the coronavirus narrative will require many lies. It will be up to us to insist on the truth.

Personally, I’d insist on an abject, groveling apology for the damage the panic-ninnies and grasping state/local officials have done if I thought there was a chance in hell of ever actually getting one out of ’em. Instead, though, we can expect plenty of self-congratulation about the wonders their self-serving lockdown orders wrought in saving us all. Which is going to taste all the more sour after perfidy like this:

I was going to do this as a video, but decided that I'm a bit too angry to be trusted with a camera and a microphone. The governor of Tennessee told everybody that he would not be extending his safer at home executive order, and that he would allow local governments to begin reopening their businesses when it expired.

Business owners reacted, bring in inventory, stocking shelves, bringing back employees, and spending money to get ready to reopen.

Today, just a couple of days before businesse were going to reopen, the governor issued a new executive order. Only some businesses would be allowed to reopen. Others would have to remain closed. Restaurants could open, but bars could not. Gyms could open, but swimming pools and bowling alleys could not. Stores could open, but playgrounds, amusement parks, theaters, auditoriums, arcades, race tracks, etc could not.

All of the theaters in Pigeon Forge were planning on reopening following the governor's original announcement. They brought back their casts and crews, spruced up the theaters, and got everything ready to open up.

Now they can't. All that time, effort, and yes, money, has been wasted as the governor, at the last minute, took away their hope.

This will be devastating to these businesses. Many of them will fail because of the governor's about face. In a cruel parody of the last minute reprieve of the death row inmate, instead of offering a reprieve, the governor's call has pulled the switch on Sevier County.

I cannot state this strongly enough; this eleventh hour extension of the shutdown will do irreperable harm to the county. It will be far more devastating than the fire of a couple years ago because there will be no coming back for many of these businesses. The governor's order will destroy even those businesses he so graciously deigned to allow to open. How will restaurants survive with no patrons? The locals won't be able to afford to eat there, and the tourists won't come because there's nothing to do. The only thing more corrosive to a bottom line than a closed restaurant is an open one with too few customers, and Governor Lee has ensured that is exactly what will happen.

And for what? Saving lives from COVID-19? Feh. The numbers are clear and getting clearer. COVID-19 was never the monster it was made out to be. Serious? yes. Devastating? Not hardly.

What will be devastating is the countless lives destroyed by this continued overreaction on the part of the governor.

It's sad; just a couple of days ago, I was praising him for allowing each local jurisdiction the dignity of decideing for themselves exactly how to transition back to a functioning economy.

I should have known better.

Considering that clear-eyed skepticism of government is supposed to have been bred into the American DNA, yeah, we all shoulda. And yet.

But let’s close this thing out on a more uplifting note, shall we? A good friend of mine texted me something C&P’d from another Fakebook post, and I thought it was worth sharing.

Perspective! It’s a mess out there now. Hard to discern between what’s a real threat and what is just simple panic and hysteria.

For a small amount of perspective at this moment, imagine you were born in 1900. On your 14th birthday, World War I starts, and ends on your 18th birthday. 22 million people perish in that war. Later in the year, a Spanish Flu epidemic hits the planet and runs until your 20th birthday. 50 million people die from it in those two years. Yes, 50 million.

On your 29th birthday, the Great Depression begins. Unemployment hits 25%, the World GDP drops 27%. That runs until you are 33. The country nearly collapses along with the world economy. When you turn 39, World War II starts. You aren’t even over the hill yet.

And don’t try to catch your breath. On your 41st birthday, the United States is fully pulled into WWII. Between your 39th and 45th birthday, 75 million people perish in the war. At 50, the Korean War starts. 5 million perish.

At 55 the Vietnam War begins and doesn’t end for 20 years. 4 million people perish in that conflict. On your 62nd birthday you have the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tipping point in the Cold War. Life on our planet, as we know it, should have ended. Great leaders prevented that from happening. When you turn 75, the Vietnam War finally ends.

Think of everyone on the planet born in 1900. How do you survive all of that? When you were a kid in 1985 and didn’t think your 85 year old grandparent understood how hard school was. And how mean that kid in your class was. Yet they survived through everything listed above.

Perspective is an amazing art. Refined as time goes on, and enlightening like you wouldn’t believe. Let’s try and keep things in perspective. Let’s be smart, help each other out, and we will get through all of this.

Wise and encouraging words.

Satire…maybe

Posted on April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Mike

The only way to tell for sure these days is to double-check the URL of the post.

Judge Dismisses Sexual Assault Allegations Against Biden On Grounds That He Is Not A Republican
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden was cleared in federal court today of charges that some claimed were based upon credible allegations of sexual assault when the judge quickly realized that Joe Biden was not a Republican.

“Well, this looks pretty serious… let’s see who is on—wait a minute. He’s a Democrat! I can find no fault with him,” declared a fourth circuit federal judge hearing preliminary claims.

“It is well established in this court that Republicans are the ones who want to silence women and control their bodies. Haven’t you seen The Handmaid’s Tale?” the judge further added before banging down the gavel.

The bailiff immediately grabbed the female accuser by the collar and threw her up into the air out onto the sidewalk, just like in the cartoons.

No definitive word from the Bee on whether Boots Randolph’s “Yakety Sax” was playing at the time.

Update! To their enormous credit, Hollywood stars are standing tall to prove the consistency of their #MeToo, #BelieveAllThe Wymrynz beliefs when it comes to Senile Uncle Fingerbang.

Emily Ratajkowski: “Men who hurt women can no longer be placed in positions of power.”

Amy Shumer: “We will win. A vote for Biden is a vote saying ‘Women don’t matter.’ Let’s stay together. Let’s fight. Let’s keep showing up.”

Ellen DeGenerate: “This tweet is for Ms Reade. You put yourself through so much and I want you to know it wasn’t in vain. You started a movement and we’ll see it through. If they won’t listen to our voices, then they’ll listen to our vote,” she tweeted.

Jim Carrey: “Real American heroism. Ms Reade risked everything to tell the truth about this privileged Biden goon. Avenge her in November.”

There’s lots more, as unexpected as they are welcome, demonstrating once and for all that…uhhh…that…

WHOAWHOAWHOAWHOA!! Hold on there, gang. My apologies, but I seem to have inadvertently subsituted the names “Biden” and “Ms Reade” for “Kavanaugh” and “Christine Ballsey-Fraud.” Sorry, I really don’t know how that might have happened.

(Via Stephen Green)

Hitting the reset button

Posted on April 29, 2020April 29, 2020 by Mike

Lee Smith opines at length on what must be done.

The novel coronavirus that swept out of the Chinese city of Wuhan in midwinter to infect millions around the globe has now forced world leaders to reassess their relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The superpower conflict between the United States and Soviet Union helped push China onto center stage nearly 50 years ago. Over the past three decades, Beijing has come to dominate the international system, thanks not only to the world’s largest pool of cheap, unregulated labor and a burgeoning consumer marketplace, but also the craven delusions and greed of Western political and business elites, especially in the United States. COVID-19 has now compelled the most significant geostrategic rethink since the end of the Cold War.

Whatever the origins of the virus, there is no question that the Chinese have leveraged it as a weapon of social and economic warfare. Could the ruins of a shooting war be much worse than those of a virus that, as of this week, has left more than 50,000 Americans dead and nearly one-tenth of the population unemployed, turning the businesses, life savings, and dreams of our neighbors to ashes?

But no one in Washington wants to call it war—and for good reason. The massive amount of wealth that America’s political and business elites have transferred to the CCP over the past 30 years has put the United States under China’s thumb. Our manufacturing base, as well as our debt, is controlled by the CCP. The United States, senior U.S. officials say, would likely lose in any major confrontation, financial or military, with China. Even the medicines we would need to treat our wounded are in Beijing’s hands.

As implied above, this is a long ‘un. But you’ll want to read all of it nonetheless.

Update! Father Raymond De Souza says this could be China’s “Chernobyl moment.” It damned well ought to be, and in fact it MUST be, by hook or by crook. Failing to inflict a heavy price on the ChiComs for this atrocity will only guarantee future repeats.

The Soviet Chernobyl moment came three years after U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” speech, which was, at the time, ridiculed by the international diplomatic establishment. Yet when the liberation of Europe from the Soviet empire followed six years later, and the Soviet Union ceased to exist two years after that, the courageous dissidents behind the Iron Curtain revealed that the forthright condemnation of the Soviet Union as an “evil empire” was a critical turning point.

A few months ago, the likelihood of the Chinese experiencing an evil empire moment was less than nil. Recall how things stood in late 2019.

After more than a year of ramped-up religious persecution, including a prohibition on children attending religious services, the replacement of crosses in Christian houses of worship with state symbols, the demolition of churches and the imprisonment of clergy, not a single word of protest was issued by the Vatican.

After months of protests to protect democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, support for the protesters on the world stage was minimal. And not just governments were afraid to upset the CCP. For example, when the CCP propaganda machine voiced outrage after the Houston Rockets’ general manager’s tweeted support for the protesters during a basketball tour of China, the National Basketball Association went into full craven apology mode.

All of the above examples are nothing short of disgraceful, and wholly despicable. Bottom line?

The power of the evil empire speech was not that it informed people that Soviet communism was evil in itself and an evil force in global affairs. Everyone knew that, even those whose interests lay in denying it. What was novel was that the American president was willing to say it. Truth has its own power.

The novel coronavirus has brought novelties of all kinds. Might a moral clarity about the Chinese Communist party be one of them?

I repeat: the one big thing to know is this: Commies gonna Commie. There is no good rationale—none—for any even putatively free nation to truck with Communist regimes in any way, shape, or form. For Americans to have allowed their political and business “leadership” to sell We The People down the river for a fistful of yuan is likewise inexcusable, and led directly to the current dismal pass. We must now demand that this situation be rectified—and I don’t mean slow, either.

Making the right noises once again

Posted on April 28, 2020April 28, 2020 by Mike

A most welcome directive from AG Barr.

In prior Memoranda, I directed our prosecutors to prioritize cases against those seeking to illicitly profit from the pandemic, either by hoarding scarce medical resources to sell them for extortionate prices, or by defrauding people who are already in dire circumstances due to the severe problems the pandemic has caused. We have pursued those efforts vigorously and will continue to do so. Now, I am directing each of our United States Attorneys to also be on the lookout for state and local directives that could be violating the constitutional rights and civil liberties of individual citizens.

As the Department of Justice explained recently in guidance to states and localities taking steps to battle the pandemic, even in times of emergency, when reasonable and temporary restrictions are placed on rights, the First Amendment and federal statutory law prohibit discrimination against religious institutions and religious believers. The legal restrictions on state and local authority are not limited to discrimination against religious institutions and religious believers. For example, the Constitution also forbids, in certain circumstances, discrimination against disfavored speech and undue interference with the national economy. If a state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread of COVID19 into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections, the Department of Justice may have an obligation to address that overreach in federal court.

I am therefore directing the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Eric Dreiband, and Matthew Schneider; the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, to oversee and coordinate our efforts to monitor state and local policies and, if necessary, take action to correct them. They should work not only with all Department ofJustice offices and other federal agencies, but with state and local officials as well.

Many policies that would be unthinkable in regular times have become commonplace in recent weeks, and we do not want to unduly interfere with the important efforts of state and local officials to protect the public. But the Constitution is not suspended in times of crisis. We must therefore be vigilant to ensure its protections are preserved, at the same time that the public is protected.

Excellent, stirring words, to be sure—but can he (or will he) make them stick?

The New Normal: Safetyism

Posted on April 28, 2020April 28, 2020 by Mike

A nation of pussies.

To grasp the urgency of lifting the ubiquitous economic shutdowns, visit New York City’s Central Park, ideally in the morning. At 5:45 am, it is occupied by maybe 100 runners and cyclists, spread over 843 acres. A large portion of these early-bird exercisers wear masks. Are they trying to protect anyone they might encounter from their own unsuspected coronavirus infection? Perhaps. But if you yourself run towards an oncoming runner on a vector that will keep you at least three yards away when you pass each other, he is likely to lunge sideways in terror if your face is not covered. The masked cyclists, who speed around the park’s inner road, apparently think that there are enough virus particles suspended in the billions of square feet of fresh air circulating across the park to enter their mucous membranes and to sicken them.

These are delusional beliefs, yet they demonstrate the degree of paranoia that has infected the population. Every day the lockdown continues, its implicit message that we are all going to die if we engage in normal life is reinforced. Polls show an increasing number of Americans opting to continue the economic quarantine indefinitely lest they be ‘unsafe’. The longer that belief is reinforced, the less likely it will be that consumers will patronize reopened restaurants or board airplanes in sufficient numbers to bring the economy back to life.

To cancel most of the country’s economy for a problem, however tragic, that is highly localized was a devastating policy blunder that must be immediately corrected. The lockdowns are taking a scythe to everything that makes human existence both possible and meaningful. Lives are being lost to the overreaction. Heart attack and stroke victims shrink from calling 911 lest they burden hospitals now dedicated exclusively to COVID-19 cases. Cancer victims have had their stem cell transplants put on hold; heart surgeries are being postponed indefinitely. The cancellation of ‘nonessential’ procedures has prevented the diagnosis of life-threatening diseases, writes a former chief of neuroradiology at the Stanford University Medical Center. Tumors and potentially deadly brain aneurysms are going undetected. Drug abuse deaths from economic despair and isolation may already be rising, as data out of Ohio suggests. The United Nations predicts tens of millions more lives globally stunted by extreme poverty and hundreds of thousands of childhood deaths.

US unemployment is at depression levels. Small businessmen who risked their savings and credit in the hope of creating a successful enterprise have had their efforts destroyed. Up to a third of local businesses may never reopen. The damage to supply chains grows deeper by the day. Farmers are plowing under cabbages and strawberries, pouring out milk, and destroying eggs because they have lost their markets. It is almost impossible to plan future production with demand so irrationally depressed. Retail sales registered their biggest monthly drop on record in March. Department stores and local newspapers may become relics.

Many cultural institutions — small theaters, regional orchestras, and opera companies — will never rise again. Demand for progressive causes such as public transit and dense, multi-unit housing will evaporate the longer that fear is stoked. Yet the safetyism rhetoric is unabating. ‘The vast majority of people want to feel safe,’ a doctor told MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle on April 23. ‘Hopefully people will turn to public health authorities and scientists for [safety] strategies.’ Those same authorities dole out positive reinforcement to keep the populace compliant. ‘Americans have done such a wonderful job’ of social distancing, Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force director, encouragingly announced, ‘so we don’t want to jeopardize their efforts with a hasty reopening’, she added.

To be sure, a revolt is brewing against the idea that perfect safety is the precondition for social and economic life. Even residents of blue states are chafing under their mandates, provoking sniffy rebukes from their public health masters. But enough people have embraced fear to destroy the necessary demand side of an economic recovery. The lockdowns signal that it is not safe to shop, travel, or socialize — a message that in most places is false. The bans must be lifted, while protective efforts are targeted intensely at the vulnerable elderly. As a harbinger of liberation, any true public health expert would tell those Central Park joggers and those solo drivers in their cars to tear off their masks and breathe free.

It’s a sad commentary on our bizarre state of affairs that MacDonald’s perfectly reasonable, rational article could strike anybody as somehow “radical,” “extreme,” or “dangerous.” But you can be certain that it will.

An idea whose time has surely come

Posted on April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

And, unfortunately, probably gone.

The country has been thrown into an unforeseen and immediate crisis the likes of which we have never seen in American history. There was no warning and no way to prepare; we are in a state of shock that the collective life we led just two months ago is completely and heartbreakingly gone for the foreseeable future.

That’s why it’s time for President Trump to speak to the trauma the nation is enduring, and not just continue the same drumbeat about the “invisible enemy” each day from the White House press room.

The daily briefings featuring the Coronavirus Task Force have become repetitive. Trump’s jiujitsu with the hostile, childish, and hysteria-inducing White House press corps might entertain some of his followers, and undoubtedly it amuses the president himself, but does little to ease Americans’ rising anxiety about the future.

Fauci and Birx, aside from misleading the president with the disastrous Murray models, don’t have much new to offer. Their updates should be short and weekly, not daily, since the health crisis shows major signs of abating.

The president should now pivot to focusing primarily on how to recover both the economy and the spirit of the American people. He needs to speak directly to our fears. He must give cover to governors who have every reason to bring life back to normal in their states rather than listening to the same small chorus of “experts” who have misled him. (Commending New York governor Andrew Cuomo while openly criticizing Georgia governor Brian Kemp isn’t a great idea, either.)

He needs to get his economic team before the public every day to explain how and when we can start getting back to business as usual—and in days, not weeks or months. Most Americans don’t want more government hand-outs or debt-inducing programs. We want to protect the vulnerable, strengthen our health care capacity, and move on before the damage is too great to repair.

Trump performs best when he gives voice to the inner worries of Americans that others are too timid to express. COVID-19 is deadly and scary but Trump promised Americans the cure wouldn’t be worse than the disease. We are now at the point where we need to hear his plan to make good on that promise—and the president must change course accordingly.

I agree with Kelly, for all the good it will do. Jules also makes brief mention of the imminent collapse of the food supply chain, which is but one of several reasons I said above that the time for Trump to try to turn things around may have come and gone. All such attempts now will most likely be too little, too late:

Executives with the Arkansas-based Tyson Foods took out a full-page advertisement in several major newspapers over the weekend, declaring the country’s food supply chain “is breaking.”

The ad, an open letter from company board chair John Tyson was published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

“There will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we reopen our facilities that are currently closed,” wrote Tyson, who noted earlier in the letter, “The food supply chain is breaking.”

The discomforting statement from Tyson comes as the company has closed plants in Logansport, Indiana, and Waterloo, Iowa. Similarly, Smithfield has closed a facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where one worker died of the virus, and JBS has shuttered a plant in Worthington, Minnesota.

Tyson’s Waterloo plant, reportedly linked to some 182 cases of COVID-19, is critical to the country’s pork supply.

The letter from Tyson warned all of these closures means “millions of pounds of meat will disappear” from the national food supply chain.

“In addition to meat shortages, this is a serious food waste issue,” wrote Tyson. “Farmers across the nation simply will not have anywhere to sell their livestock to be processed, when they could have fed the nation.”

“Millions of animals — chickens, pigs, and cattle — will be depopulated because of the closure of our processing facilities,” he added.

More, and worse:

“During this pandemic, our entire industry is faced with an impossible choice: continue to operate to sustain our nation’s food supply or shutter in an attempt to entirely insulate our employees from risk,” Smithfield Foods, the largest global pork producer owned by the Chinese WH Group, said in a statement on Friday. “It’s an awful choice; it’s not one we wish on anyone.”

“It is impossible to keep protein on tables across America if our nation’s meat plants are not running. Across the animal protein industry, closures can have severe, perhaps disastrous, repercussions up and down the supply chain,” the statement said. “Beyond the implications to our food supply, our entire agricultural community is in jeopardy. Farmers have nowhere to send their animals and could be forced to euthanize livestock, effectively burying food in the ground. We have a stark choice as a nation: we are either going to produce food or not, even in the face of COVID-19.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who is also is a beef rancher, spoke about the food supply chain on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak.

“I’ll tell you why there will be shortages,” Massie said. “Right now there aren’t shortages because there was a supply of meat that was destined for restaurants, and the demand at the restaurants was curtailed when they were shut down. It’s frozen meat, and [restaurants] are repackaging it and diverting that supply to the grocery stores.”

“That supply is going to run out,” Massie said. “The [meat] pipeline has a crimp in it, and that’s at the processing plants.”

In a Tweet accompanying the article, Massie lays it out starkly and directly, with no ifs, ands, or buts: “FOOD SHORTAGES ARE COMING.”

Meanwhile, there are nearly four million gallons of milk per day being poured down the drain—literally.

Farmers are dumping milk and plowing crops back into the soil across the U.S. after the closings of restaurants, hotels and schools in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Farmers are dumping 3.7 million gallons of milk daily and a single chicken processor can smash 750,000 eggs per week, reports Dairy Farmers of America, the largest dairy farm cooperative in the country.

As America’s agricultural industry is confronted by the impacts of the virus, there have been some striking examples of food waste.

Correction: it’s the impact of the overreaction to the virus that they—and we all—are confronting.

Wisconsin and Ohio farmers have dumped thousands of gallons of fresh milk into lagoons and manure pits.

An Idaho farmer found himself digging ditches to bury 1 million pounds of onions.

Yet more, and yet worse:

Meanwhile, South Florida farms, which supply much of the East coast, have sent tractors across the fields to replow beans, cabbage and other ripe vegetables right back into the ground.

‘It’s heartbreaking,’ Paul Allen, co-owner of R.C. Hatton, tells the Times.

The company has had to destroy millions of pounds of beans and cabbage at his farms in South Florida and Georgia.

This is scary, scary stuff, folks.

“There’s a huge amount of milk still today going on the ground in the state of Florida,” said Brittany Nickerson Thurlow, a fifth-generation dairy farmer in Zolfo Springs. “There’s just nowhere to send it.”

The supply chain that ultimately brings milk from a cow’s udder to your refrigerator has spoiled.

Florida had over 15,500 coronavirus cases, including over 300 deaths, as of the Department of Health’s Wednesday evening count. Gov. Ron DeSantis’ statewide “safer-at-home” order remains in effect until at least April 30.

There’s no telling when life on Sunshine State farms will return to normal.

Sorry to have to be the one to tell ya, but this is the NEW Normal. It ain’t pretty. Every passing day under lockdown etches total economic collapse and all its attendant misery—joblessness, poverty, hunger, and death—more deeply in stone. And for the life of me, I can’t see any way out of it.

Last laugh

Posted on April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

Why yes, I AM still enjoying this rare bit of smoker schadenfraude. Why do you ask?

There’s not much to laugh about these days, but the news that smokers might be protected from Covid-19 is certainly one of them. With study after study showing that smokers are under-represented in coronavirus wards, the renowned French neuroscientist, Jean-Pierre Changeux, is working on a randomised control trial to test the effect of nicotine patches on Covid-19 patients.

This is far from being a crackpot theory. Changeux has explained his hypothesis at length here. In simple terms, he says that nicotinic acetylcholine receptors play a key role in the development of the disease and that nicotine can put a brake on it. If he is right – and the banter heuristic says he is – it would not only save thousands of lives but would also be one in the eye for the ‘public health’ groups who have been claiming that smoking and vaping are risk factors for Covid-19.

These groups are so used to lying with impunity that they wasted no time in asserting that smoking caused coronavirus complications when the pandemic began. In the US, newspapers have been filled with reports that smokers and vapers ‘may’ be at greater risk from Covid-19, a weasel word that requires no evidence. A group of doctors in New York urged governor Andrew Cuomo to ban the sale of all tobacco and e-cigarette products on the false premise that ‘mounting evidence demonstrates the link between tobacco use and increased risk for progressive Covid-19’. Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation has been taking occasional breaks from flattering the Chinese Communist Party to make evidence-free assertions about smokers being ‘likely’ to suffer more from the coronavirus.

Is there ANYTHING the panic-mongering “experts” have gotten right about this? Anything at all? Snowdon lays out some numbers in support of the argument for smoking’s health benefits before diving into the schadenfraude deep-end his own self:

People scoffed when Emmanuel Macron exempted tobacco kiosks from France’s lockdown on the basis that they provide an essential service. Who’s coughing now?

Far be it from me to preempt the conclusions of the professor’s research, but let us consider for a moment the policy implications of nicotine being the only tried and tested prophylactic for Covid-19. We could issue Lucky Strikes on prescription. We could #ClapForOurCigarettes every Thursday evening. The case for closing down Public Health England would be stronger than ever. We could open the pubs, but only to smokers and vapers. We might allow a few non-smokers in to enjoy the possible benefits of passive exposure, but only if they stand two metres apart. There is everything to play for.

The icing on the cake would be if British American Tobacco is first out of the blocks with a vaccine. Everyone who works for the World Health Organisation would have to go unvaccinated on principle and rely instead on herd immunity. Smokers would, of course, be pushed to the front of the queue for vaccination. They paid for it, after all.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But, by God, wouldn’t it be fun?

Oh, it already is.

Hey buddy, can I get a light?

The eternal debate

Posted on April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

You geezers like me will remember the forever-burning question of Beatles or Stones; you young ‘uns, if any, won’t. But Mick Jagger has just settled it for all of us. First, though, we’ll let Sir Paul (harrumph) get what licks he can in.

Paul McCartney, 77, says it’s clearly The Beatles.

In an interview with Howard Stern on his Sirius-XM radio show last week, McCartney said “I love the Stones but The Beatles were better.”

“Their stuff is rooted in the blues, whereas we had a lot more influences. Keith [Richards] once said to me, ‘You were lucky man. You had four singers in your band. We got one.’”

McCartney, who sang and played bass and piano for the group, and wrote dozens of the group’s songs, said The Stones sometimes copied The Beatles. “We started to notice that whatever we did the Stones sort of did it shortly thereafter,” he said.

“We went to America and had huge success, then the Stones went to America,” he said. “We did Sergeant Pepper and the Stones did a psychedelic album. There was a lot of that.”

Well, okay then. Now do understand, I loved the early Beatles stuff, and I still do. I can just remember my dad getting me out of bed to watch their first Ed Sullivan appearance when I was all of four years old, and I was enthralled. In fact, it was only when the Beatles went off the pop rails into the mondo-weirdo psychedelic ditch that they lost me. But let’s see what Jagger has to say.

Appearing on Zane Lowe’s Apple Music show on Friday, Jagger said there was “obviously no competition” between the two, adding about McCartney, “He is a sweetheart. I’m a politician.”

“The big difference, though, is that The Rolling Stones is a big concert band in other decades and other areas when The Beatles never even did an arena tour,” Jagger said. “They broke up before the touring business started for real… They did that [Shea] stadium gig [in 1965]. But the Stones went on.”

“We started stadium gigs in the 1970s and are still doing them now,” Jagger said. “That’s the real big difference between these two bands. One band is unbelievably luckily still playing in stadiums and then the other band doesn’t exist.”

Yeah, there’s that. Actually, I never have cared all that much for the Stones, although it’s basically less a question of who’s the better band than it is of whether you prefer rock to pop. Nonetheless, I do love me some Keef. And Charlie Watts still ranks as one of the greatest rock & roll drummers ever.

I may have mentioned before here that my beloved mother-in-law in NYC insisted on flying me and my late wife up to see the Stones on the Meadowlands date of their 2006 tour; neither Christiana nor I were very enthusiastic about the proposition, sharing an opinion of the Stones which could be summed up most pithily as: meh. But Xenia, who had seen the Stones their very first time in the States, stood firm. And BOY, was I glad she did. The show featured the Stones with the Uptown Horns, Chuck Leavell, and a whole slew of other top-flight guest artists as well. I admit it was truly one of the best shows I ever saw in my entire life.

Jagger in particular was a thing of wonder to behold. He ran—not walked or jogged, literally RAN—from one end of the huge stage to the other and back again…for more than two friggin’ hours. Nonstop. While, umm, “singing.” As I told the ladies, I couldn’t have done that shit when I was thirty, and he would have been, what, in his late 60s at the time? Incredible.

But longevity ain’t the only weight on the Stones’ side of the scale. Hate to get so personal and all, but with rock and roll royalty, this is the sort of thing that matters. This is who Paul married:

Just to be downright cruel about it, certain ungentlemanly scoundrels once referred to her as “the dog with Wings.” Ahem.

Now have yourself a gander at the one-time Mrs Mick:

Uhh, YEAH.

All things considered, though, the Beatles/Stones debate is made forever moot for me, nothing more than small potatoes, by a whole ‘nother, far more weighty consideration. See, even the Beatles and the Stones at one time or another hied themselves to Graceland to genuflect in justified awe and pay due obeisance to the once and forever King. And friends, there can only ever be just one.

Argument settled, sez I.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

On the horns of a deadly dilemna

Posted on April 26, 2020April 26, 2020 by Mike

AG Barr is between a rock and a very hard place.

REMINDER – United States Attorney General Bill Barr was not around in 2017 or 2018 when the DOJ was faced with the issues resulting from an investigation of intelligence leaks and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) Security Director James Wolfe.

When the prosecution of SSCI Director James Wolfe was being considered, AG Jeff Sessions was recused; the Robert Mueller probe was ongoing; and as a consequence Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and U.S. Attorney for DC Jessie Liu were decision-makers.

I’m not going to repeat all the issues, you can re-read them HERE; however, the baseline is that Wolfe could not be prosecuted without running the risk of collapsing key institutions of the U.S. government. The consequences of a Wolfe prosecution were beyond the capacity of Rod Rosenstein, or the DOJ to handle. There would have been massive constitutional crises created and the literal definition of ‘sedition‘ was at the center of it.

When you truly understand this context you also understand why Joseph Pientka III has a blanket protective order over him. The all-encompassing protective order is as much about preserving and protecting the institution of the DOJ as it is protecting the fulcrum of corrupt activity Supervisory Special Agent One, Joseph Pientka III, represents.

The DOJ had to throw a bag over Pientka or eliminate him. Thankfully, and not surprisingly, they chose the former and now he’s under federal protection; so they can continue the cover-up. If it had been an Obama/Clinton AG, they’d have just killed him.

In 2018 DAG Rosenstein could not prosecute James Wolfe without exposing ‘seditious‘ activity within the U.S. government itself. Not pretend sedition or theoretical sedition, but an actual pre-planned subversive operation with forethought and malice.

Likewise AG Bill Barr could not prosecute Andrew McCabe without exposing the same ‘seditious‘ activity; which also encompasses the activity of Rod Rosenstein. Whether Barr wants to protect Rosenstein is moot; if Barr wants to protect the institutions from sunlight on two years of actual seditious activity, he has to protect Rosenstein.

It’s the underlying activity that cannot be allowed to surface; the institutions of government are not strong enough, nor are they set-up to handle, prosecutions that overlap all three branches of government.

However, that said, now AG Bill Barr is facing a downstream and parallel issue within the prosecution of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. How can Michael Flynn be sentenced for lying to the FBI when the DOJ is necessarily refusing to prosecute Andrew McCabe (at least what has been made public) for the exact same behavior?

Against this dynamic, the DOJ has two options: (Option A) go even harder at General Flynn using additional charges that are not as comparable to McCabe. (Option B) find a way to drop the prosecution.

Take the totality of all these issues together. Think about them for a while…

…Now do we see why AG Bill Barr needed President Trump to shut up?

When Barr said “he’s making it harder for me to do my job”, in essence President Trump was making it harder for Barr to protect his institutions. Trump is too much sunlight.

At the heart of the matter, in the real activity that took place, there was a multi-branch seditious effort to remove President Donald J Trump. From the perspective of those charged with the actual administration of justice – there is no way to put this in front of the American public and have the institutions survive. What we are witnessing is a dance between increasingly narrowing rails and the DOJ, via Bill Barr, trying to find an exit.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Personally, I’m surprised they haven’t tried to take Sundance out yet.

Bait and switch

Posted on April 25, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

Uncle Gropey might be about to join Albert “Arnold The Pig” AlGore, Bolshevik Bernie, and HILLARY!™ in the official ranks of Those Who Will Never Be President.

While the mainstream media has mostly kept a lid on this story, the sexual assault allegations by Tara Reade against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden aren’t going away soon. As PJM’s Rick Moran reported earlier this week, the D.C. police are treating the allegations as an “active and ongoing” investigation. Many liberals are turning a blind eye to the story, but there are some who have a vested interest in keeping this story alive and front and center: Bernie Bros.

In fact, Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie Sanders’ former campaign press secretary, who has been a vocal critic of Biden, suggested in an interview with The Atlantic that the allegations might just thwart Biden’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention.

Gray told Emma Green that the Democratic primary is far from over. “The Democratic Party would like us to believe [we’re now in the general election season], and they behaved that way even before Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race. But we are, in fact, still in a Democratic-primary season. Biden is only the presumptive nominee,” she said, before adding, “And there’s all kinds of whispers and rumors about whether or not something might happen at the convention, which might mean Joe Biden isn’t even the nominee.”

Try as Enemedia might to insert their fingers into their ears and loudly sing tra-la-la I can’t heeaaar you until it all goes away, Reade’s accusation is entirely credible, with far more evidence to support it than was ever the case back when the self-same rectal polyps were defaming poor Brett Kavanaugh.

OF COURSE Gropey did it; a leap of faith as gargantuan as Evel Knievel’s ill-fated Snake River Canyon fiasco would be required to believe otherwise, given his long history of sniffing, nuzzling, feeling up, and just generally forcing his unwanted attentions on every appalled female within his reach, whatever the victim’s age. How much that really matters to high-level Democrat-Socialist Party conspirators is another thing entirely.

Gray suggests that Democrat voters were conned into believing that Joe Biden was the most electable candidate while Reade’s allegations were ignored for over a year. A new report from The Intercept published on Friday says that new evidence supports the credibility of Tara Reade’s allegations against Biden.

I think it’s clear, based on Gray’s comments in her interview, that Bernie Bros who are not happy about Biden being the presumptive nominee are going to make sure the Tara Reade allegations don’t get swept under the rug, in the hopes that they can pull off getting a different candidate on the ballot. While this is highly unlikely, in my opinion, I’m inclined to believe that there are enough Bernie Sanders supporters who will do anything they can to thwart Biden’s nomination. Even without the Tara Reade allegations, there’s enough for Democrats to be concerned about. Biden has an enthusiasm gap that is likely not going to change, and his cognitive decline will likely become a huge liability in the fall.

Throw in Uncle Gropey’s rapidly-escalating cognitive dysfunction and there ain’t gonna be enough popcorn in the world for this shitshow.

Preview of coming attractions

Posted on April 25, 2020April 27, 2020 by Mike

If you like the panic-ninny overreaction to the Chink-N-Pox, just wait until you get a load of the rationale your masters plan to use to indefinitely confine you to your home over next.

You knew this was coming:

Public want radical response to climate change with same urgency as coronavirus, poll finds
The government should be more radical and put in place serious policies to fight the climate crisis with the same urgency as it has to coronavirus, voters believe. A new survey by pollsters Opinium found 48 per cent of the public agree that the government should respond “with the same urgency to climate change as it has with Covid-19”, with just 28 per cent saying it shouldn’t.

Environmentalists said the polling figures were a “green light” for the government to be more ambitious in tackling the climate crisis and that politicians had not yet caught up with public opinion on the issue. The polling is the latest evidence that public opinion is moving fast towards seriously tackling the crisis, following a surge in attention given in the issue last year amid international protests. The start of 2020 was punctuated with climate-related disasters like forest fires in Australia and major flooding.

Yes, it’s the Independent, a left-wing British newspaper. and, yes, we’ve been seeing this conflation of the coronavirus and “climate change” for at least the past month. The overreaction to Covid-19 has resulted in the summary abrogation of the First Amendment in the United States without so much as a shot fired, and in the imposition of lockdown orders in formerly semi-democratic Britain and in the never-really-democratic “social democracies” on the Continent.

Politicians the world over, it seems, just couldn’t wait to unleash the heavy hand of government on their hapless, trusting citizens. and now, having gotten a free look at how willingly the people transform themselves into sheep, petty tyrants in statehouses around the U.S. and in European capitals are hardly likely to let go. It seems that all you have to do is stand on a podium surrounded by doctors, frighten people into think they’ll all soon be extras on The Walking Dead, and you can get away with anything, the Constitution be damned.

And thus is the game given away. Never mind that the “legal goal” is a fiction that can easily be repealed. The absurd panic over the coronavirus is now being used as a stalking horse for further, even more punitive measures against the citizenry. After all, if the government can forbid you to leave your home out of fear of the flu, what can’t it do? Further, the longer the lockdowns last, the more “new normal” they will come to seem, so that the next government mandate, and the next, and the next, will be seen as part of a legitimate continuum, rather than the enormities they are.

And that ain’t no accident, either. Nor is it coincidence. What it is, is enemy action.

Already, those advocating for a swift reopening of the economies are being accused of wanting to kill grandma by the moral brow-beaters. In their eyes, even one death is too many, and the capitalist economies should not reopen until we can absolutely guarantee that no one will ever die of anything ever again.

Now let me see, who was it that said “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic” again, now?

The “progressives” are trying to forge a chain from coronavirus to “climate change.” Having softened up the population and herded them into pens, unleashed the petty police on them, and condemned them to a life of terrified solitude until their masters deign to free them (with restrictions, of course!), government is now very nearly free of all constitutional and moral restrictions.

Again: Accident? Coincidence? Or that third thing I mentioned?

Some folks out there have challenged the get-the-boot-off-our-necks crowd with the query: So, how many people are you willing to let die of Chink-N-Pox so you whiny little bitches can go back to work? But that’s the wrong question, seems to me, and is more or less irrelevant anyway, since A) none of us has any real control over who will die, or of what, and B) none of us are getting out of this world alive anyway.

What I’d much rather have an answer to is: How many more of your already-vanishing Constitutional rights are you willing to give up forever in order to contain a malady that looks more every day like much ado about very little? Do you REALLY trust your rulers and their pet “experts” that much—even after EVERY SINGLE ONE of their computer-model projections have proven wrong, and their doomsday predictions have had to be hastily revised over and over again?

Make no mistake, people: when I said “permanent” and “forever” just now, I meant it. History has proven again and again and again that rights relinquished will never be given back; they must be TAKEN back, almost always via violent force. But what really curdles my cream is the abandonment of the fundamental principle that—no matter the crisis, the calamity, the season, the general public mood, or the supposed justification—directly and incontrovertibly flouting the US Constitution is NEVER acceptable. If you’re the gummint—federal state, or local—YOU DON’T GET TO SHUT DOWN THE CHURCHES, for one example, regardless of the supposed “risk” to however many of whomever from whatsit.

Yeah, yeah, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Got it. If I remember correctly, exceptions to the clear injunction against any restriction of the people’s unalienable rights are countenanced therein, if reluctantly, in time of war or insurrection only. Well and good.

But a blanket, across-the-board imposition of house arrest? No right to peaceably assemble? Businesses shuttered indefinitely by government decree, the purchase of certain arbitrarily-selected consumer goods forbidden? Freedom of movement now punishable by legal sanction, up to and including arrest? Gun stores closed, ammo sales locked down? No right to attend worship services?

No, sorry, but…NO. Contrary to what panic-ninnies both Left and Right are now screeching, nobody wants to get sick. Nobody wants to die, or to recklessly endanger others, to have “blood on their hands.” So stipulated. Nonetheless, Constitutional principles are supposed to be fundamental, not to be contravened by any government that hopes to sustain its claim to legitimacy. Here’s how I see it:

The tension between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches, between the states and federal government, is by design. It is supposed to be challenging to “get things done” in government. Sure, crises require sacrifices, but we must be careful to preserve the structure that protects our liberties in the long run.

We are thankful that the U.S. Department of Justice recognizes the serious threat to the constitutional structure these sorts of action present. Americans do not lose constitutional rights during crises. “There is no pandemic exception,” DOJ writes in its statement of interest in the case, “to the fundamental liberties the Constitution safeguards.”

It is a great tribute to our Constitution that these checks and balances are working to create the friction necessary for Americans to take notice of the deeper issues at stake here. But we must take note and demand much better from our public officials. Federal and state executives would be wise to take a step back and consider the long-term implications of the actions they are taking. They must preserve and respect the constitutional structure that guards our liberty.

The American spirit in 2020 still shouts, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” as Patrick Henry did in 1775. No exception for Covid-19.

Forever and ever, amen. Peggy Ryan calls BS:

What are we doing, America? We’ve destroyed a booming economy, turned a record number of jobs into record unemployment numbers, and given up our basic tenets of liberty — all so we won’t get sick?

We’re allowing governors to restrict people’s movement; prevent citizens from assembling; and order mandatory masks, testing, and vaccines. These governors now claim the right to track our every move, to surveil every American in order to ensure compliance. This shutdown is not just a slippery slope to socialism and communism; it’s a downhill slalom.

How did we get here? Americans aren’t cowards who would eagerly surrender liberty for immunity. But therein lies the genius of the left. It’s not just about you and me, now, is it?

The left has hostages: our aging parents, grandparents, sick relatives. Either we put down the Constitution and slowly back away or the hostages will die.

Too many Americans have died for our liberty for us to squander this treasure over a virus. Over a million American soldiers — young, healthy — ran headlong into gunfire, navigated mine fields, dodged bombs, and otherwise gave their lives so Americans can be free.

Not a single patriot sacrificed his life, his future, to keep Americans from getting sick.

The government claims it’s protecting us from the virus. With the Constitution in lockdown, who’s protecting us from the government?

Just us, as always. Like I said last night, the Constitution doesn’t protect the people; it is the people who must protect the Constitution. Ryan closes out with a dead-on quote:

“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” —Daniel Webster

Precisely so. It’s dismaying to see how many of us have forgotten that truism, or never understood it in the first place.

Blood on your hands update! Reasonable people can disagree honestly and respectfully. Then again, some people are just irredeemable assholes.

Just this once I’ll forego my customary “fuck you in the liver with a rusty railroad spike” comeback and let Linda handle it.

But, in fact, we are making a choice that returning to work is worth the risk – EVEN OF OUR OWN FAMILY. We take sensible precautions. We do the outside errands of our elderly family (and, often, of neighbors, as well).

But, in the end, some risks just have to be taken – for example, those who are considered essential and frontline. No one tells the nurses and truckers to stay home. We accept that they are putting their own, and their family’s lives at risk – for YOU to stay home, safe.

Don’t see those sanctimonious ones criticizing them. Instead, they are filled with praise for their “bravery”.

Financial problems have destroyed more than one American family. Long-term financial problems – not just “Oh, I can’t buy the latest shoes!” or “Bummer, I have to drink homemade coffee, rather than my $5 Latte” – can cause the emotional, physical, and mental breakdown that leads to a lifetime of despair.

It’s not selfish to prefer to keep your family intact. It’s not a bad thing to think that children deserve to have their mother and father living together. It’s not evil to NOT want (corrected from opposite meaning) to see the frugality of a lifetime wiped away, because NO ONE should die. Ever.

Even old people with multiple illnesses/conditions. Even if they were already hanging on by their toenails to life.

This is not Un-Christian. This is a realistic understanding that we cannot ask the entire country to upend itself for months, solely to make you feel better about having sacrificed US. Yes, US. Because most of those who are saying these things, are still getting a paycheck. Government workers, large corporations, schools.

If this is not devastating your finances, I just don’t want to hear from you. You haven’t skin in the game. You have nothing to lose by Virtue Signaling your willingness to see the rest of us suffer to make you feel better.

As she suggests, a sense of proportion is one of several important things that have gone right out the window in this debate. And that ain’t helping any either.

Are they sick, or just sadistic?

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Mike

Your tax dollars at “work.”

Feds Were Buying Cats from Chinese Wet Markets, Fed Them to American Cats for Research: Report

Wait, what?!?

Do you find your stomach turning when you think of the treatment and handling of domestic animals, and the apparent disregard for sanitation, at China’s now-infamous wet markets?

According to one report, you may have been providing those markets financial assistance for many years.

A March 2019 report from the White Coat Waste Project — a watchdog group that wants to “drain the swamp” by ending federal spending on projects that use dogs, monkeys, cats and other animals as guinea pigs — revealed that U.S. taxpayer funding went to these repulsive centers for death and disease.

And it gets worse.

According to the the report, U.S. government researchers had been conducting “kitten cannibalism” experiments — spending taxpayer dollars to buy cats and other animals from Chinese wet markets and then feeding their tissue to kittens in the U.S.

Well hey, it’s right there in the Constitution, you know.

The practice had apparently gone on for some time, too.

“Since 1982, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) has conducted, and continues to perform, toxoplasmosis experiments on cats,” the report said.

“The currently approved protocol for this project calls for up to 100 kittens to be bred each year at ARS’s Animal Parasitic Disease Laboratory (APDL) in Beltsville, Maryland. At eight weeks old, the kittens are fed raw meat infected with the Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) parasite, and their feces is collected for up to 3 weeks so experimenters can harvest oocysts (eggs) for use in food safety experiments. These healthy kittens — who briefly pass the parasite’s eggs and become immune within weeks — are then killed and incinerated by USDA because they are no longer useful.”

That’s where the wet markets come in.

Now, I am not a scientist, a doctor, or a veterinarian, and can lay no claim to expertise about such things. Nonetheless, I have to ask: dude, what the fucking actual fuck???

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